


Tell

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Forbidden Love, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:43:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15789186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: "No regrets, Mustang. I still believe in you."





	Tell

“It could’ve been worse,” Maes said softly. By the regs, they could’ve sent him to prison. Dishonorable discharge is… well, it’s no worse than he expected, really.  
  
“This isn’t fair, Hughes.” Roy protested. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life. It _isn’t_ fair. He and Maes are both guilty of the same crime that shouldn’t be a crime, they were in fact caught engaging in the prohibited homosexual activity _together_ , but because Roy is an alchemist they won’t discharge him. It “would not be in the best interests of the military,” apparently.

He could quit, turn in his pocketwatch and walk away from everything he’d been working toward since he drew his first chalk circle when he was twelve. That would be fair. And Maes had told him that if he did it, he’d never speak to him again.

“I always knew the regs, Mustang. Unlike you, I actually read them. Most of them.” He gave Roy a weak smile and tried to pretend like the complete implosion of his life didn’t bother him. “My dad’s gonna murder me,” he muttered. There was a genuine look of terror in his eyes. Roy knew he wasn’t kidding. Exaggerating slightly, maybe. It seemed unlikely that a rational man like Maes Hughes’ father would actually kill his only son. But disown him? Absolutely yes. He basically already had.

Roy reached out to take Maes’ hand, on instinct, but Hughes shook his head and he stopped. Bit his lip. Tried to remember to breathe, because frustration and hatred - for the Amestrian Military, for Hughes’s fucking father, for _himself_ because Hughes wouldn’t be in this position without him - overwhelmed him until he was almost shaking. And reaching out to comfort Hughes, or be comforted by him, could only make things worse.

“Come home with me,” Roy said softly. Maes raised an eyebrow, but he knew Roy wasn’t talking about the military dorms where he slept and kept his stuff. He still said “home” when he meant Madam Christmas’s place, where everyone actually liked Hughes and no one cared about his technically illegal sexual preferences. He thought about it, he really did, but then he shook his head.

“I can’t, Roy. I just… right now, I need a little space.”

Roy’s chest tightened and his stomach hurt, but he nodded. The last thing he wanted was to watch Maes walk away, but he couldn’t claim any right to ask him to stay, not when he’d just lost everything because of Roy.

So Mustang sat down heavily on the bench in the dimly lit hallway outside of the small military courtroom on the second floor of Central HQ. He was aware of the looks the passing officers gave him, and without Hughes there to be a buffer, to tell him it didn’t matter, to tell him that he was perfect and worth loving, he just felt dirty and disgusting and everything that was wrong with him was now out in the open. No one will serve under him, now. No one will promote him. What is the fucking _point_ of fighting for a military that won’t fight for him?

He sat there for almost an hour, until the room emptied out and then the hallway emptied out and then he was alone unless anyone happened to be holed up in an office late on a Friday night. He only got up because he didn’t want to deal with a challenge from a passing security patrol. He barely left the dorms all weekend, and when Monday rolled around he actually did his work, in near silence, giving his commanding officer no reason to think he was incompetent. The man would be within his rights to transfer Roy out anyway, but he didn’t have to make things worse.

After another week of unbearable tension, listening to insults and slurs and threats until he was tempted to do something drastic, like lash out with fire, he claimed his right as a State Alchemist to travel for research, and he got on the first available train, which happened to be heading to North City, which was not a place Roy would ordinarily go voluntarily, he hated the cold. But this was not an ordinary situation, and he could fucking deal with it.

But every night as he half-froze to death in his Northern hotel room, he missed Maes more and more. He picked up the phone more than once before remembering that he didn’t have any idea where Maes was, or how to reach him.

He spent his days playing around with the possibilities of making fire out of ice, melting down the water and pulling out the hydrogen and oxygen until he could actually create a much larger and more explosive combustion reaction than he could usually manage in dry air. That was promising, and distracting enough that he could sometimes forget for hours-long stretches that he was a miserable failure at life.

He was still in the North when a corporal found him in the library and handed him a Transfer Order. Roy frowned. He wasn’t here in official military capacity, wasn’t working under anyone, and who the hell would want him, anyway? He scanned the document, and his confusion only grew.

“Ishval?”

The corporal shrugged. The orders said “active immediately,” listed his new C.O. as Colonel Grand, and told him he was shipping out from Central in two days. By the time he got back to Central, that gave him one night. He went home, somehow knowing that he would find Maes there.

He was sitting on a barstool at the farthest end of the room from the door, but he looked up when Roy came in, and he smiled. Roy walked over to him as calmly as he could manage, and then wrapped him up in a tight hug.

“Fuck’s sake, Mustang, are you _crying_?”

Roy pulled back, looking up nervously at Maes. “Are you? Are we…?”

In response, Maes kissed him, and the heat of it took Roy’s breath away. Maes wrapped his arm around Roy. His touch sent bolts of lightning shooting through Roy’s entire body. When Maes’ hand slipped between Roy’s legs, Roy pushed him away and then led him to his room.

Maes slammed the door behind them and grinned at Roy, sliding his tongue along his lower lip and _daring_ Roy to find other uses for that tongue. He laughed when Roy pushed him onto the bed. “Who knew all it took for you to man up was a court martial?”

“If you wanted me to top, you could’ve just _asked_.”

“I’m asking now.”

Roy nodded, and he watched Maes undress, feeling like he was the luckiest man in the entire fucking world.

“You gonna stand there staring all night, Mustang?”

“I might.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Maes pulled him down and then slipped one hand under his shirt while using the other to pop the buttons open with practiced skill. Roy shrugged out of the shirt and then pulled his undershirt over his head. Maes brushed kisses over his bare stomach and chest, and circled his nipple with his tongue until Roy couldn’t catch his breath.

Then he pulled back and raised an eyebrow, as if to say “let’s go.”

Roy rummaged around in the drawer of the bedside table until he found the small jar he needed. He dipped his fingers into the lube, then slipped first one finger and then a second inside Maes. He wasn’t used to doing this, but from the sounds Maes was making, he was doing okay. He scissored his fingers open, spreading Maes a little bit more and causing his breathing to quicken.

“You doing okay?” Roy murmured.

“Fuck yes, Mustang. I want you inside me.”

“‘K.” Roy stopped just long enough to kiss the side of Maes’ neck, sucking at it until he was sure that it would leave a mark. Then he pushed a third finger inside, and explored until he found Maes’ prostate, making the other man cry out and tremble. Roy pulled his fingers out before Maes collapsed completely, holding him steady while he lubed up his cock and then pushed in. Maes groaned and Roy pulled out a little, then pushed back in, going harder and faster until a strangled scream tore out of his throat as he came.

Maes gathered him into his arms and kissed whatever random part of Roy’s body his lips could reach. Roy stroked Maes’s cock with his thumb, and then used his whole hand to bring Maes to climax.

“Fuck, Mustang,” Hughes breathed.

They lay there on the bed, safe and whole and sheltered from the world, and panic fluttered in Roy’s chest, because he was supposed to be on a train in seven hours.

“They’re sending me to Ishval,” he said, as he rested his head on Hughes’s chest and let the man play with his hair.  
  
“Yeah, I know. It’s all over the radio. A major push to end the war, they’re saying.”

“I could still quit.”  
  
“Not now, you can’t. That’s desertion.”

Roy pushed himself up, so that he was sitting and could look Maes in the eye. “Hughes, I…”

“Shh.” Maes reached out and put his hand on Roy’s cheek. He kissed him, slow and deep, and Roy closed his eyes and breathed in the moment. “No regrets, Mustang,” Maes said, after he broke the kiss. “I still believe in you.”

“I love you.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re going off to war.”

“No, I’m _not_ , Maes, I mean it, I… love you.” He trailed off, suddenly afraid Maes didn’t feel the same way, that he never had, that this relationship, whatever they had, was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.

Maes grabbed Roy’s upper arms, almost about to shake him, and then he just looked him directly in the eyes and said, “Shut up, idiot. I love you, too.” He kissed him again, put one hand on the back of his neck and rested the other at the base of his spine. “You better come back to me, Mustang. I didn’t get kicked out of this fucking army just to let you die without me.”

“Okay,” Roy agreed easily. Maes Hughes could make anything seem possible, could make it all seem easy. “I promise not to die.”

“That’s my boy.”

Maes kissed him again, and Roy knew with certainty that his life would never get better than this.


End file.
